“I’m from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.”

Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be… safe. At least she knows she’s living.

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life…And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.

She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.

I’ll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . .

I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them from.

She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, “You have a bad case, a very bad case.” “Of what?” “Growing up.

Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’

New York! I’ve always wanted to see it and now I’ve see it. It’s true what they say– it’s the most wonderful city in the world.

The world was hers for the reading.

I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.

Chicago actors are hard-nosed. They’re tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They’re self-demanding.

I’m leaving because I want to spend more time with my wife in Chicago.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food… they’ve never even tasted it!